Elizabeth's husband had died a horrible, painful death after a long illness. And when he died, it was as if a light had gone out in her soul, so deep and dark was her grief. Why had a good man like that had to suffer so, she wondered. Her grief was made worse by her having been taken on as a project by a fundamentalist Christian church on the edge of town. The guy she had dated in high school had been "saved," transforming him into an insufferably pompous prig. Now he and his wife and all their new Christian friends were out to save her. Elizabeth hides from them when they come to call. While she longs to climb out of her grief, she doesn't want them with their grinning talk of Jesus. Elizabeth says of these Christians,

"They refuse to look on the dark side of things, and they want her to…